December 2015

July 25, 2007

“My lodging at Isfahan was in a convent which is attributed to the shaikh Ali ibn Sahl, the disciple of al-Jonaid. It is held in great veneration and is visited by the people of those regions, who seek to obtain blessing by visiting it.”

In this convent Ibn Battuta had a momentous moment; he was elated to be initiated into the Suhrawardi Sufi taqqiya, the Sunni school of Sufism founded by Abu an-Najib as-Suhrawardi. (The more famous, or perhaps infamous, as-Suhrawardi was Shahad ad-Din who founded the Illuminationist school, a fusion of Zoroastrian, Platonic and Islamic philosophy, for which he was executed in 1191, his views being considered antithetical to Islam.) We went off in search of the monastery. Predictably, the people working in the tourism office had never heard of it and had no idea where it was although they told us their director knew everything there was to know, but he was not there. Fortunately its location was in the guidebook...........

The lovely tree-shaded monastery Ibn Battuta would have seen although the adjacent hammam with its tiling has gone.